Actress Brigit Forsyth has said her GP grandfather helped "loads" of terminally ill patients end their lives.

She told the Daily Mirror that Dr Noel Forsyth "bumped off probably loads of people with doses of morphine" when they "were having a horrific death from cancer or something, in terrible pain" where he practised in Malton, North Yorkshire.

Forsyth said she believed it was "true of all doctors at the time".

"He would just up the morphine and then they died. I don't see anything wrong with that," said the 76-year-old, who starred in Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?

"He'd be called a murderer today, but that's what people were doing.

"The law says you're not allowed to help people get off this planet. Well, I think it probably needs to be looked at."

Forsyth said she thought her grandfather, who died in 1948, had acted in a "terrific" way, and she thought euthanasia was a "very good idea" - claiming that she would take herself to Dignitas.

"To me, it's a nightmare if you're kept going as a sort of vegetable, or in pain," she told the paper.